Airlines To Lay Off Thousands

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Fear Of Flying, Safeguards Force Massive Cuts

Massive layoffs at the airlines continued Wednesday, as AMR Corp. and UAL Corp. each cut 20,000 jobs to ensure their survival.

AMR, parent of American Airlines, employs 10,000 people in South Florida, ranking it among the largest private employers in the area.

"This is without a doubt the most difficult thing I have had to do in my two decades at American," said AMR Chairman Don Carty in a letter to employees. The cuts will be across the board, but details of how many employees in what areas and what types of jobs were not released.

American said employees would learn the specific status of their jobs in the next few days.

UAL, parent of United Airlines, has a far smaller presence in South Florida, with a dozen daily flights from Miami and only a token presence in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach during the winter.

Other airlines are considering similar moves in the wake of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, which left many travelers at least temporarily afraid to fly. Delta Air Lines on Wednesday urged its employees to curb spending and warned some reduction in employee costs is coming.

"We're reviewing all of our costs," said spokeswoman Cindi Kurczewski. "We have made no announcements about employee actions and we will not speculate on when or what any announcements might be."

Delta is the busiest carrier at the Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach airports.

All three airlines have reduced their schedules by 20 percent because of plummeting demand and the extra time needed for each flight to comply with tighter security.

The impact is beginning to creep beyond the airlines to companies that depend on the airlines for income. Boeing Co. said Wednesday it will lay off up to 30,000 employees by the end of next year in anticipation of declining orders for new jets by its global customer base.

"What we are facing here is a commercial-aerospace depression," said Brian James, an analyst at Loomis Sayles & Co. "Aircraft deliveries are probably going to get cut in half."

Airline service firms are also under pressure. Speaking in Miami on Wednesday, Gov. Jeb Bush said companies that work on jet engines and repair aircraft, particularly at airports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, are in jeopardy because they depend on airline work.

"You'll see a whole lot of businesses that are going to be impacted if there is not a restoration of the airline business," Bush said.

AMR said its job cuts would be spread among the 115,000 people who work for American, its American Eagle commuter subsidiary and TWA, which it recently acquired. The airline has already cut 9 percent of its 178 flights into Miami, where it controls over half the flights.

Spokeswoman Martha Pantin said she did not know the comparable reductions at airports in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, where the airline has about 7 percent and 5.5 percent of the traffic, respectively.

Leaders of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants say a provision that American accepted in 1981 requires the carrier to offer unpaid leave before it can furlough flight attendants, who would still receive medical and travel benefits.

American's 11,000 pilots could seek to protect their jobs at the expense of pilots for TWA, which AMR bought out of bankruptcy this year.

AMR has about $1.5 billion in cash plus a $1 billion revolving-credit account, enough to operate for about 53 days without new revenue, Salomon Smith Barney estimated.

Bush said Florida's job-training programs were on "high alert" to respond to the growing number of unemployed airline workers. Earlier this week Miramar-based Spirit Airlines said it would lay off 800 of its 2,100 employees.

Other airlines that have announced layoffs in the past few days include Continental, which announced 12,000 job cuts; US Airways, 11,000; and American West, 2,000.

Tom Stieghorst can be reached at tstieghorst@sun-sentinel.com or at 305-810-5008.